WK's Top something or other... let's just say "games" and call it good list.

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I've been having issues writing this entry. I mean where do you begin? Like other major Nintendo games on this list, I feel like it's hard coming up with why this game is so awesome because it's pretty obvious. A Link to the Past made Zelda. I know there were two entries before it and they were pretty damn good games in their own right, but everything people know and expect from a Zelda title appeared in this game first. Nintendo has effectively been remaking this game with a different gimmick for the last 26 years, that's how smurfing good it is. So I find myself a bit besides myself needing to justify this entry being here.

One thing I can say is that one of the things that really drew me into this entry was a manga adaption of the story written and drawn by Shotaro Ishinomori, the author of Cyborg 009 and it was published in Nintendo Power magazine back in the day. To this day, that version of the story partly plays in my head when I play through this game. From the fairy companion to Link conversing with Zelda to the bittersweet ending. The manga left quite an impression on me and was one of the many things that endeared this game to me. I will also say that Nintendo seems to have been influenced by it as well since several elements show up in later installments like Link transforming into a wolf like creature in the Dark World, a heavier emphasis on a deeper bond between Link and Zelda, the DW has a moon with a face on it, even the climatic battle was partially re-used in Wind Waker for the match against Ganondorf, and it kind of started the trend of bittersweet endings in the series. If you haven't had a chance to read it, you should check it out.

In truth, A Link to the Past was a game that crossed over from the bare bones plots of the NES era that simply had you wandering all across Hyrule until you found something, into a story that made you feel like you were embarking on an adventure. What makes it unique from the games that came after it is that ALttP still retains several of the most open elements that had defines the earlier installments. It feels like a marriage between the original and the new RPG like elements that Zelda II introduced. You're not just given a simple task, you start the quest answering a call from Zelda, get caught up in an evil scheme that makes you a criminal. traverse the world for the three artifacts to prove your worth, lose Zelda, gain the Master Sword, storm Hyrule castle, lose Zelda again but slay the villain, only to find out he's not the real enemy and you must explore a new dark version of the world with more dungeons and dangers to rescue seven sages before fighting Ganon for the Triforce. It doesn't take rocket science to see how that feels so damn epic compared to "travel Hyrule to find the Shrine/Palaces to gain the Triforce so you can save Zelda" which had been the plot of the earlier installments. ALttP made Zelda, Link, and Ganon feel like real people, I mean you get to meet Zelda right off the bat for once and she actually speaks with you throughout the game. ALttP also transformed Hyrule into a real place and not just some fantasy land nonsense. It was given a history which you explore and it makes your actions feel like it has some more weight to it. Finding a creepy guy who wants to hand you a sword if you have enough hearts can certainly stir your imagination, but it felt so cool actually undertaking a quest to retrieve THE sword. You can even power the damn thing up which was pretty epic. This might be my main love for this game, it gave narrative purpose to the franchise.

Even the dungeons have largely become legacy elements such as a Water Temple involving the hookshot and hitting switches to change the water elevation. The Ice Dungeon was the first dungeon to pull the whole multi-story dungeon where you have to climb to the top so you can drop down to the basement levels to fight the boss. It even has cool story type dungeons like the Thieves Hideout and Blind the Thief who turned out to be a really clever boss fight. The Hookshot, Mirror Shield, Bottles, swimming gear, and the damn Master Sword all made their debut in this game. We witness the transition from the Silver/Light arrows being Ganon's weakness to the Master Sword itself. The gameplay was expanded to incorporate better NPCs with more personality, better sidequests, mini-games, and the pieces of heart became the ultimate finders keeper quest. The brilliant way the game utilized the transition from the Light World and Dark World for puzzle solving has frankly never been matched by any future mechanic in the series. It was a key element to actually beating the game and mastery was the only way to achieve pure completion.

For me, it's no real surprise that this game held such a major impact on the rest of the franchise, and my mic dropping moment for all of this is simply the fact that it has the best Zelda Commercial ever.

My friend Delzethin is currently running a GoFundMe account to pay for some extended medical troubles he's had. He's had chronic issues and lifetime troubles that have really crippled his career opportunities, and he's trying to get enough funding to get back to a stable medical situation. If you like his content, please support his GoFundMe, or even just contribute to his Patreon.

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Eh, idk. It has a lot of interesting concepts and is a fantastic game in many ways. But it's still standing on the shoulders of a giant. There would be no Link Between Worlds without Link to the Past, and frankly, the best parts of LBW are still lifted straight from LttP.

Let me set the stage for you, my family is celebrating my birthday at Pizza Hut and most of the adults are chatting away about the election and whether George Bush would have the chance to beat Bill Clinton. I on the other hand could care less about the election and the party, I just want to go home because one of the games I've wanted for a long time has finally come into my grasp. Mega Man 2 was a game I was introduced to years before at a game store in the mall I frequent. Having grown up on Mario and arcade beat em ups, the concept of choosing the boss you want to fight and gaining their weapon as a power up was a completely novel approach to games I had never really thought of. I had my dad rent this game for me countless times, and finally for my birthday, he got it for me.

The series had already jumped to the fourth entry by this point, but I was in love with MM2. The music, the boss stages, and it was the one I was the most familiar with. Playing through the series a bit a few years back lead me to discover why I love it so much. The game was a massive improvement over the original. In an almost Assassin's Creed like way, MM2 was a major improvement over it's innovative original by fixing all of the problems the game had. Better bosses, better designed stages, better weapons, improved game balance and difficulty curve, and far more original ideas for stages. I mean we remember the disappearing block puzzles from the first game, but I often find people remember them more in MM2 for the infamous Heat Man stage. Quick Man's laser gauntlet has been reused several times in the franchise and even to this day, the Metal Blades are considered to be the greatest boss weapon Mega Man has ever acquired.

For me, I feel MM2 ultimately cemented the Mega Man formula, and every sequel has sort of just felt like minor incremental advances on that solid foundation, even some later features technically debuted in MM2 such as Rush just being a glorified version of the Special Item tools, and the Charged Mega Buster coming from the Atomic Fire weapons charge ability. Hell, almost every entry has had a shield weapon since Wood Man's Leaf Shield. An interesting element MM2 kind of introduced was the idea of bosses having multiple weaknesses which allowed this entry to have more variation on how you approach boss order. I usually leave Crash Man and Quick Man for last, but I've tackled all the other bosses in several different orders. I've even done playthroughs where I left Metal Man for last just so I didn't over rely on his broken weapon. This element of the game always makes it feel fresh to me as opposed to other entries that sometimes follow the weapon exploitation formula a little too strictly, leaving little variation in playthroughs.

This game also just has my overall favorite set of bosses. Perhaps not the best set in terms of challenge granted, but I love the weapons they give, their designs and stages. Not to mention the rocking soundtrack they are all put to. In fact MM2 might be the best score in the franchise, including later series like X, Zero, and Battle Network. One cruise through Overclock Remix will show that this entry gets way more love than the others and even Capcom tends to recycle music from this entry far more often than others. It may even be my favorite video game score, that's how much I love it.

Another feature I love is the feel of storming Wily's Castle. I mean the first stage blasting through the barriers and climbing the walls only to be chased down by a massive mecha dragon all while this is playing. If you think cinematic gaming began in the PlayStation era, you have obviously not really checked what the best the classics had to offer. To this day, the Wily Stages from MM2 are my favorite and the bosses from those stages still stand out to me more than even Yellow Devil.

While my love for the X series is far greater than the classic franchise, I spent a good chunk of my childhood idolizing this game that always seemed to be out of my reach and while I've dabbled in the later installments, none of them could ever catch my attention like this darling did. Like most of my top ten, this is a game that is not only never far from my mind, but I genuinely have to talk myself out of playing so I can focus on all the cool new stuff I haven't touched I have stacked around me.

Aw, yes. #6 is a good place for P3. It would go higher if the pacing and gameplay reached the peak that the characters and writing did.

I never got in to MegaMan until the X series. And I only really played the first and third, though I did really like them. Battle Network one and three were my favorite games featuring MegaMan, though.

Persona 3 was a game that ultimately surprised me. I had just finished Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, and I really wanted more and to my luck, I heard Atlus had finally announced a new entry for the franchise. When I heard it was going to have dating sim type elements and randomly generated dungeons, I was pretty skeptical and the initial trailers and screenshots looked far too clean and pure anime over the more edgy and light horror elements of P2 and even P1 surprisingly enough. Yet when I finally got a hold of the game and dived in, I found many of my fears were unfounded and was completely caught off guard by one of the best designed games I had the joy of playing for some time.

You play a resident Marty Stu who has just moved back to his hometown of Tatsumi Port Island, an artificial island with a bustling metropolis and the prestigious Gekkouken High School. Asked to transfer into a mixed Dorm Room and making a pact with a mysterious boy, the MC becomes aware of the Dark Hour, a mysterious "extra hour" of the day that takes place between Midnight and 12:01 where people transform into coffins, the streets are filled blood, and monstrous creatures called Shadows stalk the few people who did not change. Most people are unaware of the phenomena, but the people of your dorm are. They formed a special group called S.E.E.S who fight back against the Shadows by using a power called Persona, a physical manifestation of a person's mind that takes the form of mythical and cultural beings that allows them to wield psychic powers to fight the Shadows.

During the day, your a mild mannered high school student, attending classes, making friends, joining club activities and trying to live a normal life. At night you travel to Tartarus, a hellish tower the school takes the form of during the Dark Hour and the possible source of all the Shadows. What connections do the tower and school share and what is at the top of the tower? How much does the Kirijo Group, the industrialist family that invested in the building of the town know about the Shadows? Why are major shadows starting to appear around town during the full moon? What does your character have the power to wield more than one Persona and is connected to the boy who visits you during the Dark Hour? What is the Fall the boy speaks of and what does he mean when he says you only have one year left?

Persona 3 marked the reboot of the Persona franchise from character driven but still essentially the typical SMT formula games into the popular cash cow franchise most of you know it as now by combining a watered down press turn system with RG- Dungeons, and social sim gameplay. Yet I'll be honest when I say that I'm a bit sad when I look at the franchise now because it's simply mimicking the popular bits without understanding the brilliant artistic weaving of the story, themes, and gameplay functions which ultimately keep this game standing out to me compared to the titles that came after it. P3 doesn't just appeal to me as a gamer, it appeals to me as a designer and artist.

Gameplay is split between daytime social sim activities and nighttime activities that can either be more social sim activity or you can choose to dungeon crawl through Tartarus and play with more typical RPG shenanigans. Yet you time is limited, you only have so many days to move forward and unless you are a paranoid save scummer, your choices are pretty permanent as you move forward by choosing to strengthen your bonds with characters via the social link system in order to get better bonuses with persona you create, or by simply leveling and gaining money in Tartarus to make you stronger. A large part of the challenge of the game is balancing these two needs which itself is not very different from classic MegaTen where negotiating with demons was often just as important as standard battles. Yet it's important to remember that your choices are limited and a choice of screwing over a week in a particular month can hurt you later down the road.

I'm bringing this up because this very element and the calendar system in general is based around the games central themes of Memento Mori Remember you will die and the meaning of life which is where the social links come into play. While most games certainly move the player towards an inevitable conclusion, Persona 3's mechanics are designed to add a layer of stress to the player to simulate this feeling of mortality. You don't necessarily feel like your going towards an ending but rather an end, and I always find it amusing and exhilarating for myself and other people I talk to about the game when you hit December and realize you have no time to complete all of your social links in time. I appreciate this sense of feeling like time is running out despite the clock of the game being pretty damn generous and the later editions of the game making it even easier to complete all of the Social Links with plenty of time.

This perfectly illustrates the theme of Memento Mori as the game constantly reminds you that time is running out and you begin to second guess yourself about how you should spend your days. The saying "Memento Mori" can also loosely be interpreted as "Remember you are mortal/have limited time" and the saying is not some grim Game of Thrones style edgy quote, it's original intention is to invoke a sense of how important our lives are, even the stuff we think is insignificant like a lazy Saturday afternoon you choose to nap. You're suppose to remember that our lives are limited and we should make the most of every day. P3 perfectly invokes this message with both the Calendar mechanic and the story which lingers heavily on themes of death and mortality, but uses these elements to create a message about not wasting your life away and make the most of it because we only have one real shot at it.

This is beautifully illustrated with the characters and the social links. Your entire party is wears the pain and fear of death like a cloak. The MC is revealed to have left the city after he survived a terrible car accident that resulted in him seeing both of the MCs parents killed before their eyes. Yukari is driven by the death of her father and trying to uncover what really happened to him, Akihiko is driven by the death of his sister in a fire and seeks power to protect people because he failed to save her, Shinji and Ken are both driven to emotional desperation by the death of Ken's mother, Mitsuru and Junpei both see first hand the tragedy of watching loved ones die over the course of the plot, even the damn dog joins the team after his master is killed by a Shadow. “Death is not a hunter unbeknownst to its prey" indeed. Even the Social Links carry the theme of Memento Mori as irreversible choice. In addition to having stories based around the themes of their arcana, all of the characters in these social links struggle with making a choice that will change their lives for good and finding themselves in standstill where their lives never move forward. Magician wants to date his teacher despite the taboo, Chariot struggle to reveal an injury he's hiding, Temperance has to deal with losing his dream of being in Japan, Star has to decide if he will continue his star athlete career or find a job to support his mother and family, Sun is dealing with accepting his own eventual death from his illness. Again, the story and gameplay intertwine and reinforce the games theme so of choice, death, and life. In fact the ultimate message of the game concerning the meaning of life is simply that the bonds we make in life give it meaning. While P3 is a game heavily steeped in thematic elements of death, to misquote Raiden from the MK movie: "Persona 3 is not about death, but life."

This kind of brings me back to a point I made earlier: What does the Calendar system and Social Links have to do with "Finding Truth" and "Social Reform" that are the central themes of P4 and P5? Not a whole lot actually, while we can argue the actual social links themselves address the themes, the concept of making bonds and the inevitable forward momentum of time have no real substantial connection to the game's overall central themes like P3 did. They are just there because it was a popular and well received mechanic that made the series stand out from their competition, and were of course expected to remain in the future installments. My problem here is that we took something so artistically brilliant and cheapened it for basic entertainment. Don't get me wrong, spending time to build a stronger bond with Kanji or helping Ms. Sadayo get out of her financial struggles are some great moments that help those games stand out, but they lack the almost cathartic feel of P3's conclusion as the MC faces the physical embodiment of death itself and reflects on the lives they have touched and touched them in return n order to find the resolve to face an impossible odd that all of the story and gameplay features had been building towards. The mechanics are not there just for the sake of novelty, they serve a narrative purpose and they tie back into the games themes. P4 and P5 never had the satisfying conclusion to them that I felt in P3, but that's because P3 was designed with a singular intent to deliver a message.

While I know most fans are divided by the A.I. controlled companions, at least in the non-P3P versions, I came to really appreciate them because the A.I. is actually pretty smart as long as you remember to scan the enemies and I liked the thematic reason for this design choice: because the devs wanted the party to feel like individuals and not just dolls you dress up and order around. It's similar to Aggro's odd controls in Shadow of the Colossus, because Aggro isn't designed to play like a vehicle you have control over it, she's designed to play like your riding an actual horse and occasionally the horse isn't going to follow the riders orders if they know it's dangerous or stupid. It's actually amusing in P3 how the party's skill sets and A.I. behavior reinforce their personalities and behavior. Junpei's boisterous personality and lack of foresight translates to a character who will often blow all of his skill points and use risky behavior in battle. Mitsuru is more analytic and likes being prepared with buffs or weakening the enemy with status effects before going in for the kill. A lot of the game's interesting challenge is noticing these traits and building teams that help offset a characters weaknesses in both ability and temperament. Similar to BoFIII's unique battle animations for Kid Ryu, Yukari and Junpei are often more hesitant and may quiver in their speech when using the Evokers to summon their personas until they grow in levels and in the story to get more confidant. They are very interesting touches that I feel adds some cool layers to the game and I'm often sad when other players gripe about them.

The Tired/Sick mechanic is another one that serves such a purpose as it helps to prevent the player from over-grinding and spending too much time in Tartarus. It's meant to be inefficient and a bother because the devs are challenging the player to have to risk losing real hours of game time to a MeagTen Death that could have been prevented had the player just cut their losses and left finishing the section of Tartarus for another day instead of pushing on with a sick and tired party that became more susceptible to back attacks, Critical hits, and reduced power. I fell victim to it many times but like the Risk system of Vagrant Story, it's a mechanic design to prevent the player from steamrolling over the game, something I learned through P3P's nerfing of the mechanic for the player's benefit, which makes traversing Tartarus a bit more of slog since you can complete entire blocks in a single night with the same party consequence free. Hell, the mechanic ultimately forced me to use my whole party in the early installments because tired and sick members would excuse themselves from the party and I would have to roll with the available members still ready to rumble. So like Risk before it, I came to appreciate the mechanic for forcing me to change my tactics and find new ways to work around the games challenge. I also love the user0freidnly features the game offers like letting you slit the party up to explore or have the party attack shadows for you while you explore and grab treasure chests they guard. This often makes the unnervingly massive Tartarus tower less of a chore to deal with and make doing quick money runs pretty stress free.

Of course, not everything is perfect, The Once More system is still a fun gameplay mechanic that adds a lot of depth to standard turn base action, but coming off from Shin Megami Tensei III and Digital Devil Saga's superior Press Turn System makes you realize that the Once More system is basically a watered down experience that removes some of the higher level strategy the Press Turn system offers by largely trivializing the defensive game. The system is basically the Press Turn system on Training Wheels mode for players who get too easily flustered when you have to put more thought into tactics and get punished severely for not doing so. So while it's still better than the type of stuff series like Final Fantasy can offer, it still feels like so much less than what the mainline series had to offer.

P3's story is great, but the pacing is both it's greatest strength and weakness depending on how you look at it. The plot moves only in two speeds: Galcier and Runaway Freight Train to Hell. The early months are incredibly slow and it often feels like the game is going by slowly as only small events here and there happen and you fall victim to a daily routine, yet this kind of works for the games theme of Memento Mori as you eventually start treating your time in the game like you would in normal life and in the latter half of the game the plot picks up greatly as one major event happens after another with little time for you and the team to be able to sit down and process it all in. It;'s only now, in this moment of crisis do you become painfully aware of how little time you have left as your party may take days to pull themselves out of depression to finally go back to visiting Tartarus or spending time for social links. Like real life, it's only in moment of peril that we become painfully aware of the fragility of it all, only when someone dies we remember that it is our own eventual fate. The pacing of the story and the action of the cast reinforce these feelings but I'll be honest that it doesn't always lend itself well to gripping narrative when you spend the first half of the game just checking off daily routines while remember to slog through Tartarus to keep your levels up for the eventual Full Moon Boss battle like it's a chore you need to check off. Yet it's also kind of brilliant watching the more subtle growth of the cast as the dialogue of the characters and various NPCs lighten up as the weeks go by. It's all subtle, but it's there and so I often feel like P3's cast has the most natural growth of character development I've seen in an RPG, because it's small but incremental, not just grandiose entrances and an occasional big scene here and there for comedic effect, though the game has plenty of those as well. I appreciate the fact the party slowly grows to trust each other and their is actual in-fighting and distrust, it helps keep the characters feeling more real and interesting unlike the more picture perfect casts of later games that often struggle with issues you want to solve with a "hug out". Yuakri is a bitch, and I love her for that. Her growth doesn't feel fake and it's more gradual and even handed. Same with Junpei who depending on the month loves you like a brother, hates you, or feels awkward around you depending on what's going on at the time.

I've been in a lot of Persona discussions lately and the release of Persona 5 earlier this year has tested my loyalties to this particular entry. I even thought for a moment when I was getting ready to write this up that I would chalk this entry being this high for pure nostalgia and nothing more, but on better reflection and as I write this piece, I've removed the self-doubt and remember why this game shot up into my top ten list after I finished the original. It's a masterpiece of craftsmanship, and while I can concede that P3 had plenty of room to grow as a concept and the sequels jumped to say cause, none of them have ever quite grasped the majesty of this games interconnected design that just impresses the smurf out of me. If you haven't played the game, or perhaps you haven't played it in awhile, I feel maybe now would be a good time to check it out for either the first time or perhaps for the hundredth time because I feel it's safe to say the franchise has a bright future and it's important to sometimes look back on the pivotal moments in a franchises history to understand why these series become such a big deal.

Coming Up Next: Call it what you will—A revelation from God, or a curse of the demon king. The fact remains that our world came to an end.